1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed generally to methods of configuring a virtual application.
2. Description of the Related Art
A virtual application is a virtual machine image pre-configured with all of the files, registry data, settings, components, runtimes, and other dependencies required for a specific application to execute immediately and without installation on a host computing device. The virtual application is isolated from other applications implemented on a host computing device and at least partially isolated from an underlying host operating system installed and executing on the host computing device. The virtual application is encapsulated from the host operating system by a virtual runtime environment, which includes a virtual operating system, that receives operations performed by the virtualized application and redirects them to one or more virtualized locations (e.g., a virtual filesystem, virtual registry, and the like).
The virtual application is stored in and implemented by one or more executable files. Depending upon the implementation details, the one or more executable files storing and implementing the virtual application may include blocks of data corresponding to each application file of a natively installed version of the application. Herein, these blocks of data will be referred to as “virtual application files.” The one or more executable files storing and implementing the virtual application also include configuration information. When the virtual application is executed, the configuration information is used to configure the virtual operating system to execute the virtual application. For example, the configuration information may contain information related to the virtual application files, virtual registry entries, environment variables, services, and the like. The virtual operating system is configured to communicate with the host operating system as required to execute the virtual application on the host computing device.
As is apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art, the one or more executable files that store and implement the virtual application are read-only. Thus, if these read-only blocks of data are modified by the virtual application (or the virtual operating system) during execution, the modifications are stored in a readable and writable location referred to herein as a sandbox. The sandbox is a location on the host filesystem, a network share, a removable storage device, and the like whereat files may be created, modified, and deleted by the virtual application at runtime. For example, when the virtual operating system needs to create, modify, or delete a virtual application file, the virtual operating system does so in the sandbox. Similarly, if the virtual application modifies a virtual registry value, the virtual registry value is changed in the sandbox. The virtual operating system may also route some requests and actions to the host operating system for processing.
In some cases, a user may wish to configure the one or more executable files that store and implement the virtual application to include modifications that are easily made during runtime but are difficult to implement from outside the application. However, as discussed above, modifications made during runtime cannot be written into the one or more executable files that store and implement the virtual application. Therefore, a need exists for a method or system for merging changes made during runtime into the one or more executable files that store and implement the virtual application. The present application provides these and other advantages as will be apparent from the following detailed description and accompanying figures.